


Falling Away

by dragonflies_and_dalmatians



Category: Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: F/M, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-08
Updated: 2012-06-08
Packaged: 2017-11-07 07:24:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/428421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragonflies_and_dalmatians/pseuds/dragonflies_and_dalmatians
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time it happens, it’s a surprise and it isn’t, because they’re more similar than either like to admit. I posted this at my FFN account but pulled it for an edit, thought I'd repost it here. Written after seeing 2.03 and based on rumours through to 2.05.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Away

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: The Walking Dead belongs to AMC and Robert Kirkman, not me. I just wrote this for un

The first time it happens, it’s a surprise and it isn’t. 

Or rather, Andrea’s surprised because she just isn’t all that surprised. 

There’s a certain inevitability about it, maybe even a sad wistfulness or sense of foreboding, like you can smell the rain in the air and are then stunned when it begins to pour. Maybe this was where they were always meant to end up, fighting and screaming and frantically trying to outrun the ghosts of dead and missing siblings. It almost makes a macabre kind of sense that they try to run together. They’re more similar than either like to admit, although she can’t think of another person who would think that about them. The Georgia backwoodsman and the Florida lawyer: on paper they can’t be more different but paper doesn’t mean much these days, less than it used to and more than it really should. Their past differences bump and jostle against their present selves until it feels like there’s two of each of them: Before Andrea and Now Andrea, Before Daryl and Now Daryl. Trying to be both at the same time is as exhausting as it is crowded and she wonders if she shouldn’t just get it over with and jettison the dead weight of her past life. 

Sometimes Andrea can feel herself falling away, can feel more and more of her old life falling away, into oblivion. It helps that he’s the one falling with her only she doesn’t know if they’re falling in the same direction. He seems to be falling up, away from the angry, volatile man he was when his brother was around, while she seems to be falling down, away from Amy, away from everything that feels good and right. But then, maybe the direction they fall isn’t important so long as they fall and land together.

She doesn’t remember how it happens, not exactly. Maybe they finally woke up to the fact that his brother’s missing and she had to kill her zombiefied sister, and can ascribe their behaviour to nothing more than a fleeting rush of insanity. Maybe its something in the air: Lori and Rick haven’t stopped clinging to each other since Carl got shot, Glenn looks entirely too pleased with himself whenever he looks at Maggie ... maybe she’s suddenly woken up to the fact that she’s lonely and her romantic options are moving in concentric yet ever-shrinking circles ... maybe its the fact that since they went out together in the woods to search for Sophia, she’s realised that Daryl Dixon isn’t the totally repulsive hick she first thought. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that it happens: one minute they’re bickering about something inconsequential (she’s holding the rifle wrong/she’s moving too noisily/doesn’t he ever take a shower/would it kill him to be a little bit less of an asshole), the next minute their respective tempers explode (neither one has ever been the kind to back down from a fight), and finally her back’s against the bark of the nearest tree, his crossbow’s somehow made its way into her hair while still on his back and he’s pushing his bulky body against hers and plundering her mouth with his. She’s arching into every touch with a gasp and a groan, less surprised that they’ve reached this point and more surprised that it hasn’t happened sooner when it feels this good.

He kisses her with an ease and assurance that can only come with practice, his lips moving against hers with a rough kind of expertise. Droplets of his sweat run down her skin and into her hair as he roughly kisses her, desperation and anger threading through his mouth and his tongue and his teeth in equal measure. He’s not gentle in his ministrations (although Andrea’s willing to bet that he could have been, in another life) but she didn’t expect him to be and in a way, it’s what she wants. She wants something so rushed and frantic and exhilarating that she feels herself fall away from this life, that she loses herself in something else if only for a moment. It would seem that he’s happy to oblige. 

A moment is all they get. Behind them, twigs snap and branches rustle and then two voices having a frantic, hushed conversation that Andrea and Daryl weren’t meant to hear. Rationality reasserts itself and Daryl jerks away from her just as Lori and Shane stumble across them. The four glance at each other, taking in Andrea’s swollen lips and stubble-rashed cheeks, the bite mark that’s forming on Daryl’s neck that can in no way be attributed to a walker, their general state of rumpled dress and – most embarrassingly of all – the bark that’s stuck in her hair and the abrasions she can feel on her back. An awkward silence of knowledge that can’t be un-learned descends on them until Andrea breaks it by excusing herself and Shane asks Daryl something about the search for Sophia. As she leaves he gives her a look which indicates that they clearly aren’t done, and something akin to anticipation shivers down her spine. Maybe falling away with Daryl Dixon won’t be so bad, after all.

Andrea half-expects Lori to accost her and offer her some advice like she’s her mom or best friend or even her sister and its almost a blessed relief when she doesn’t because Andrea can’t deal with any more drama in her life. Shane’s a different matter entirely.

“You know what you’re doing?” He asks her bluntly one day in-between weapons practice and an inventory of their supplies.

Andrea glares at him. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” She says softly, cursing his audacity. Un-fucking-believable. “Because its none of your business.”

“I know.” Shane says evenly. Since Otis’ death, Shane’s been a little .... off. Which isn’t saying much, because they’re all hanging by a thread, but he seems closer to the proverbial ledge than everyone else. “Just ... be careful with him, Andrea.” He says finally. “He’s got a mean mouth and a meaner temper.”

At first, Andrea’s so shocked at his words that she’s rendered quite literally speechless. Not for long. “You don’t even know him!” She says, furiously rising to Daryl’s defence. “He’s done nothing but work himself to the bone looking for Sophia and hunting for us all and you still treat him like he’s some white trash redneck you found on the highway! How dare you!”

“Yeah, and I bet that you know him way better than the rest of us!” Shane retorts. 

He moves to open his mouth but abruptly closes it when a familiar shadow colours his shirt.

“Somethin’ you want to say to me, Shane?” Daryl says from behind Andrea, and she turns to find him standing in the shade next to the RV, crossbow slung over his shoulder. When no answer is forthcoming, Daryl continues, his voice loud enough for Shane to hear but low enough for privacy. “Because I don’t seem to remember offerin’ an opinion when you and Lori Grimes used to slope off into the forests to fuck like rabbits while Carl played with Sophia. So you stay out of our business and we’ll stay out of yours, got it?”

The second time it happens is while they’re doing a sweep of the area off the highway while Carol and Dale check the supplies they left for Sophia in case she should find her way back to the road. They haven’t been touched which means that while Sophia hasn’t come through here, neither has anyone else who needs regular food, and Carol’s cries reverberate into the woods as Andrea and Daryl search. 

They’ve come across a few walkers since their impromptu stop but none of them chill Andrea so much as the one they stumble across on that hot summer’s day. 

She isn’t sure what horrifies her the most: the fact that it’s a walker, period (she still can’t quite get used to the way they walk), the casual way it's sat down near the brook, as though watching the fish, or the way it has obviously gnawed its own arm to a bloody stump ending some five inches below the elbow. What chills her are the denim shorts, the floral vest, the long, blood-matted but obviously blonde hair and milky porcelain skin. What chills her is that she looks at the walker and sees Amy, for a horrifying second sees herself. Daryl despatches it with cool authority but seeing it is enough to almost make Andrea snap.

Once again, she can’t quite remember how they got from shooting walkers to hot, open-mouthed kisses against a tree but soon they’re there and his breath’s as hot and wet against her skin as his fingers are teasing and insistent and there’s no Shane and no Lori, only her and Daryl and the sudden need to be away from everything. As he slips inside her for the first time she bites back tears of anticipation and need, very thankful that Maggie had the foresight to bring back that box of condoms back from the pharmacy; there was one missing but Andrea didn’t ask and Maggie didn’t volunteer. 

Like his kisses, the sex is a little on the rough side, inevitable when its up against a tree and there was no guarantee you wouldn’t be interrupted by walkers or the others. But the only pain is the discomfort that comes with not having had sex in a while and that’s more than compensated for by the pleasure that shoots up her body from head to toe and back again, blotting out the pain and the hurt and the tears. She’s forgotten what it’s like to feel the weight of a man pressed against her, to feel warm human flesh and a man’s stubble and sweat. He moans and whispers into her ear and she knows then that she isn’t the only one falling, but she doesn’t know if either of them wants him to catch her.   
Its all over in minutes and soon they’re back on the road, crammed in the back of the truck with Carol and Dale up front, prattling away about Carl and Lori and Rick. Andrea tries to tune it out, intensely conscious of Daryl’s gaze on the side of her face.

“Do we need to talk about this?” He asks as he turns up at her room later that night bearing a hip flask full of bourbon, his face barely illuminated by the single candle burning in the hallway. They’ve been rotating rooms in the Herschel farm to make sure that everyone gets at least some time in a proper bed. Tonight is Andrea’s turn. She’s just getting ready to go to sleep when there’s a gentle rap at the door.

He fills the small bedroom as he walks into it and sits down on the bed, taking a swig from the flask before offering it to Andrea. He’s leant his cross bow against the wall and she can see the outline of a clandestine pistol tucked beneath his vest. He’s been on edge since they arrived at the farm, she isn’t sure if he can sense some kind of bad vibe or if it’s just the thought of being settled in one place after so long on the run, with the guns securely locked away. 

“I don’t know.” She says, shifting awkwardly as she sinks onto the bed next to him. She’s still a little sore from their afternoon encounter but, she’s almost horrified to admit, not sore enough to not want to do it again. And Maggie had told her to take as many condoms as she needed ... she stops herself right there. “Do we need to talk about it?”

He stares at her for a long moment before tipping the flask at her. “You need to talk about something.” He says eventually. 

“I could say the same thing about you.” 

He regards her curiously for a moment. “I saw how you looked at that walker.” He says softly. “Saw how you looked at it. It wasn’t your sister, you know.”

“I know that.” She says, sharper than she intended. “I remember what happened to my sister. I was there. I put a bullet in her head myself.”

They stare at each other long and hard before Daryl speaks again. “You’re lucky in a way.” He says in that blunt way he has about him, but his voice is soft, his blue eyes boring into hers. He isn’t trying to hurt her, just .... she doesn’t quite know what he’s getting at until he says the rest of his piece. “Your sister’s dead but at least you know what happened to her. You got some kind of closure. It sucks but it’s done with, over. With Merle ... I don’t know if he’s dead or alive.”

Andrea looks down. She hasn’t thought about it that way, has assumed that since Daryl doesn’t mention him and because no-one else here misses him, he doesn’t either. “Must be hard.” She says eventually. “You must miss him.”

He shrugs nonchalantly. “Miss the idea of him.” He says. “My brother was my brother but it was only by blood. He was a mean, drunk, son of a bitch. But he was the only brother I got.” He doesn’t say ‘family’ and Andrea wonders if, like her, he’s coming to feel a little more at home with their ragtag group than he’s going to admit. Family comes in many forms, after all: it doesn’t always have to be by blood. In fact, some of her closest family were no blood relations at all.

“Do you think you’ll go searching for him?” Andrea asks. 

Daryl takes another swig of the liquor and shrugs again. “Maybe.” He says. “Thought about it. Figured I might if we were fixin’ to leave this place soon but everyone seems .... happy to stay here.” He finishes. “And I ain’t leavin’ till we found Sophia.”

Andrea gives him a smile. Shane has been making more noises about leaving, has done since she overheard his conversation outside the church, just before Carl was shot. She doesn’t blame him and she doesn’t blame Daryl, she’s just surprised that Daryl wants to stay. “That’s real nice of you.” She says softly. 

He presses his finger to his lips in a ‘shush’ gesture. “Don’t tell anyone.” He says, a devilish glint in his eye. When he reaches for her then she doesn’t object, goes into his embrace willingly. 

It’s different this time. Firstly, it’s on a bed and they’re horizontal, and while they have more time they have to be quiet, but there’s less frantic energy there. It’s still slightly rough but not as rough as before and she’s guessing that varying degrees of roughness is all he knows how to be. He seems to sense that’s not all she knows how to be, though; he’s pushing her t-shirt off rather than clawing at it, gently and awkwardly threading his hands through her hair rather than using it to yank her head back to give him better access to her mouth. But once they’re done he reaches for his clothes and she doesn’t ask him to stay. 

At breakfast the next day both Lori and Maggie watch her with knowing eyes, a stare that she returns in full. It’s almost normal, in a way: women watching each other with silent knowledge and understanding about their respective need for the men in their lives. She knows that neither of them understand what she and Daryl are doing, truth be told she doesn’t either, but she doesn’t much care. When Daryl puts his hand on her knee under the kitchen table, she doesn’t mind. It’s kinda nice, actually. Maybe they’ll end up falling into the same place, after all.

###

When she shoots him she almost loses it, not just when she realises that not only is he not a walker but she’s shot the only person who’s able to catch her. Staring down the sight of that rifle, she isn’t sure which is worse: the thought that another person she cares about has become a walker and she’ll have to dispose of them, or the realisation afterwards that Daryl’s alive and well, he’s just shot because of her. 

Herschel tells her in his stern, Puritanical way that this is the reason why they don’t have guns on the property. Shane stands there and gives her another lecture about gun safety and having the strength to accept the consequences of pulling the trigger, before kissing her forehead and telling her that Daryl’s going to be fine. Maybe he isn’t such an asshole, after all. Lori and Carol alternate between comforting her and helping Herschel patch up Daryl. Dale tries to give her fatherly advice that she isn’t interested in taking. Glenn just sits there offering silent support. Finally, everyone’s paid Daryl a visit except for her, and as she stands outside the bedroom, her hand on the doorknob, she really doesn’t want to go in there and see what she’s done. 

He’s asleep on his back when she walks inside, naked at least from the waist up and swathed in stark white bandages. He’s clean, too – the cleanest she’s ever seen him. Without a constant layer of grime and sweat his hair is a dirty blonde rather than the brown she initially thought and his skin is pale and smells like soap. He looks younger than she realised, too. Young and vulnerable. It’s not something she associates with Daryl but it’s there on his face: he needs taking care of, now more than ever and its all her fault. She’s such an idiot. She could have killed him. So she sits on the hard wooden chair next to the bed, waits for him to wake up and thinks about how she can get him to let her take care of him.  
Once he’s well enough to travel they begin to make preparations to leave. Having zombies in the barn also hurries their ministrations, and Andrea’s hurriedly packing stuff into her bag when she senses rather than sees him enter her bedroom, closing the door behind him. He moves awkwardly but steadily and she has a feeling that she’s going to have to force him to stay still. Assuming that he ever wants anything to do with her again. 

When she turns around he’s standing at the bed, his arms folded, watching her carefully. The light from the window bounces onto his face, striking his eyes and she feels like she’s truly seeing him for the first time, without the layers of dirt and grime and stupid human emotions and rationalisations that people use to justify behaviours shitty or stupid or otherwise. She sees him. And then it hits her that she could have killed him. 

He winces when she launches herself at him but doesn’t object or stop her when her arms slide around her body and pulls her closer, burying his face in her hair. “Stupid girl.” He chastises her gently. “Who the fuck taught you to shoot cos it sure as hell wasn’t me, thank God. People I teach to shoot don’t miss.”

“I’m so sorry.” She breathes. “God, Daryl, I’m such an idiot.”

“No argument there.”

“Why aren’t you yelling at me? Why isn’t anyone else yelling at me?”

“Because somethin’ tells me that you yelled at yourself enough for the both of us. Whole state of Georgia, probably. Ain’t gonna waste my breath.”

His hands are gentle and tender on her skin, this time. Gentle and tender but .... tentative. Unsure. He’s never done it like this before, not really: a long time ago when he was young and stupid and his heart got bruised too easily. He’s trying to relearn a dance he was never sure about in the first place. His reticence comes through with each touch and Andrea’s happy to help him, to show him what she likes and a few things that he realises he likes, too. His lips move against hers with a little less force than before, his hands and fingers touch her skin with feather-light touches. As he moves on top of her, inside of her, she feels something welling up inside her and starts to cry into his shoulder, starts to release the pent-up energy that she feels about everything. A look of horror crosses his face when he realises what she’s doing but she begs him not to stop so he doesn’t. 

Afterwards they lie together in a tangle of sweaty limbs, Daryl’s eyes glazed and calm in a way she’s never seen before. 

“You okay?” He asks huskily, the knuckles on his hand gently grazing her bare arm. 

“I’m fine.” Andrea says, giving him a warm smile. 

He gently kisses her then, his tongue gently caressing her lower lip. Its the most honest, most intimate they’ve ever been. For the first time, she feels like she’s fallen and he’s caught her. Maybe she’s caught him, too. 

FIN.


End file.
